Three poems by Summer Edward, who teaches writing and communications at The University of the West Indies as part of World Poetry/Prose Portfolio [WPP], curated by Sudeep Sen
In A Certain Light
It is an innocuous world ―
the fruit that hangs above us,
sweet, ripe, dangling low,
waiting for our hands to slice
the sunlight, reaching up
through leaves like green
udders dripping translucent milk,
is the most perilous thing I know.
Aside from that, in a certain light
this whole world becomes
simpler than a pang of hunger.
In a certain light all is palpable,
the mystery fades, the lover in us
dies, and in dying, can escape.
It is only then that I, waiting
at the threshold of your certain light,
am ever truly afraid.
Horror Vacui
Trinidad, 2018
Driving back from Chaguanas,
you get lost somewhere in Waterloo.
Dusk descending, a gesso of ash.
In the dizzying fields like carousels,
are horses, calm, wooden, raising
lambent tails like paintbrushes.
Your tires’ calliopeic strain
lifts the sky’s detached canvas,
and you alone appear to share
the cattle egret’s sudden panic.
Why bother to speak of the country,
of how, among the vanishing things,
the highway feels like salvation?
This getting lost feels like hell,
all this bush a revenant of past bush,
the land reft, revealing no details
despite our compassing wrongs; turn
then, mimic what must be God’s
elaborate amusement. Park, and read
your map of fears with godlike pity,
before you drive on, determined
to find your way, to learn something
of your labyrinth, your country.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Yet still somehow you must enter
the province of emptiness; wayfinder
that you are, you must live with
the ghost of beauty who drives you,
who sits with you in your car,
who drove your people to their horror.
You too are the ghost, the lost traveller
roaming the undrawn hills,
as if they, only, were your island.
Lovesong of the Schuylkill
Philadelphia, 2014
I. The Goose
On the banks of the Schuylkill
this evening, July’s house
sits ablaze at every window.
Breasting goose
exiting a vestibule of the river,
head bowed in innocence,
crosses my eyes’
hanging scroll like Jingzhao’s
mountainous cranes.
I am weary of finding you
on the verge of love.
Like today, you sang of travels;
I knew I would fly
to this staying shore
again, to regain perspective,
as darkening boathouses
regain theirs for every season’s
work of art.
II. Spring
On Schuylkill shores
branches are still
naked like lovers after love,
inky infinitude, The Moated Grange.
This is another opus
of the same sun I left behind,
tumbling in the arms
of brooding El Tucuche.
Nature is divested,
dispossessed in her
duty, ignoring latitude.
Whatever the frame,
a picture will be painted.
III. A Picnic with the Goose
Earlier that year,
I made a picnic with the Goose.
A season when I sat for hours
ignoring the runners
chasing summer down
the river trail.
He came up from the river,
sat at my feet
like a waking dream.
I thought of the songbird
draped in history,
the illustrated drake,
yet you are the one
that pleases me.
Bird of my breast,
black bird, I want
to capture you
in my moss-lined cage.
The look of one
who would defy bars,
nightly ascend towers,
enter gardens swift.
So modestly you pried
your beak, made searching
calls betraying
strong knowledge
of rugged worlds.
I wanted to clip you
right away, pinion you
to my nest of hair.
IV. A Vision of Lenape Women
Yet when evening birds
rise above the Schuylkill,
I rise from the dream
of the captive.
East Falls, October chills.
Standing on the truss bridge, a vision:
Lenape women in fields of maize.
Did they work and praise
these river banks, to Manaiunk,
“where we go to drink”?
Dreamlike, I enter
Gast's allegory; Columbia
hovers above the river,
schoolbook clasped
against her breast, ancient
drapes admitting one
alabaster leg.
Lenape, nation
that honored women.
Wolf women, turkey sisters, turtle aunts.
Women sprouted from the first
tree, proud
clan mothers, the earth’s
red ochre lifeways
in their veins, who knew secrets
of millstones, braided cords, smoke fires.
Now October reports
of a flaxen maid
floating in dead waters,
new indigenous crime.
Columbia floating
in a river with a murderous name.
Nightly, the sky hangs
lanterns above these waters,
for drowning women.
V. The Pyre
River, golden mintage
between ancient banks.
Goldenrod, firethorn,
pyre of flame
gathering offerings
in every season.
All the fire you fed
at autumn’s birth.
VI. The Rower
One day, snapping photos,
I caught in the shutter
the lone rower at sunset
threading the golden silk.
Head back again to the jungle of life,
to the full-blown flower,
the undrainable brook.
Again your soft stern,
the jungle's fast flight.
Upstream to the sun that flees
taking the light
one day at a time,
the jungle opening its center,
full of interior mystery.
All rivers begin at the hips of jungles.
VII. The Wedding
Evening, behind the art museum.
In spruce gardens,
from the overhanging hill,
I witness a parable of joy:
a wedding set
to Gatsby-era melody.
An hour’s fading
Neoclassical light;
the Waterworks Restaurant
cooled like cake:
mill house, engine house, caretaker’s house,
Grecian sculptures in peach fondant.
My eyes watered
the moving scene,
an ancient tableau vivant sprang to life.
Then I saw how each structure
was the symbol of a life.
For what is this life
but conspiracy
of motion, time’s secret
foundation, love’s soft
-singing turbines clearing
centuries of cosmic waters
for nuptial waiters,
costumed players
who would dance all night
beneath a pavilion of stars?
I thought I saw the ghost
of the Caretaker
wandering among the guests.
I went on my way, unseen
wheel turning my blood.
When I turned
at the top of the hill,
it was gone.
VIII. Queen of Rivers
And I turn and dream
of African rivers, sinuous
water bodies, fever trees
thickening on shores, wagtails
bedded in leaves, gold-and-blue
kingfishers swooping down
from fig trees to clasp fish.
Rivers running bold through
Death’s valleys, swelling hot
in sea-green grottoes.
I want to rest in the gentle arms
of mother rivers: Nile,
Limpopo, Congo, Zambezi.
To sleep in swaddle
like the baby prophet
pillowed through the reeds.
When pursued by lecherous gods
profess the Greeks, artless
maidens were changed
into watercourses, wells;
and this is holiness?
If I were Queen, had my way,
I would divert choice rivers.
Not Lethe, Oceanus, old man Stynx,
his unclean beard, his serpent’s tail.
I would be protector of young,
unknown rivers, freshwater bodies
abandoned to penetration
of harpoons, pearls ravaged by robbers.
If I could be Queen of any
landform, let it be rivers.
IX. Love’s Dream
But here in Schuylkill’s
frigid courts,
I see I have left
warm rivers behind.
At night I have the dream
where all the rivers flow
together into one.
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